The Power of Exclusion:
Potential High School Dropouts Speaking Out

A Paper Presented at AERA in Montreal, April 15, 2005

Judy Radigan
Rice University
jradigan@rice.edu

This four-month study of dropouts in an urban high school in a large Southwestern school district is unique because high school students participated in the literature review, data gathering, analysis and the final presentation. Data on the dichotomy engendered by change in this study was gathered through classroom observations, student reactions to literature reviews and interviews with school leavers, their families, teachers, and administrators. Field notes and transcribed audiotapes of the classroom observations and interviews were combined into thick records for this researcher’s analysis. This paper analyzes the data from a critical theory perspective based on Carspecken’s (1996) reconstructive analysis that makes explicit the tacit inequality of opportunity for the students in the region of “failure.” The purpose of this study was to give voice to the students’ position on the lives of dropouts and to move them from the hermeneutic/insider position they held in their educational process to the third person outsider role. The students realized that their routine social actions form and reproduce system relations that are detrimental to their lives. The ultimate goal of this study was full agency for the participants while understanding the manifestations of power along with the internal tensions and implicit telos they implicate.

The disparity between Texas’ official dropout rate of 1.5% and the reality of losing more than 50% Latinos and 40% African-Americans has contributed in bringing the nation’s poor school completion record to the forefront of the national educational agenda. The research of Balfanz and Legters (2004), Haney Madaus, Abrams, Wheelock, Mico, and Gruia (2004) , Johnson (IDRA) (IDRA, 2004), and Orfield, Losen, Wald, and Swanson (2004) highlight this discrepancy and provide a solid backdrop for this study conducted with and by high school students. Fine’s (1991) landmark study made it clear that African American students were being excluded from school by policies that are in conflict with the lives of the students. Orfield and Lee (2005) magnify this problem with their connection of the resegregation of schools and the poverty that surrounds these schools that have what Balfanz and Legters (2004) call “poor promotion power.”

What has been left out of this equation is what the students themselves understand about the system that educates them and the way it interacts with their personal lives. How do we give the minority students living in these poor urban districts a voice in the dropout arena? As we designed the research project in this study, we turned to critical pedagogy and Freire’s (1993) problem posing to ask the preliminary questions “What causes students to dropout of schools?” and “What is missing from the dropout literature?” to our potential student researchers.

This four month study examines the process by which potential school leavers in a poor urban school researched the dropout issue, recounted their stories, and the stories of the students they knew who did not complete high school. This paper will discuss the methodology, the researchers, the research process, the findings of the research, and the recommendations the researchers made.

The Researchers

For four years I had been studying school reform in an inner city high school in a large metropolis in Texas. I was observing the final presentations of a legislative project in senior English and government classes in the fall of 2003, when the principal turned to me and one of the senior English teachers with a request, “Why don’t we get a group of these kids together and really dig into dropouts.” Then she asked me specifically, “Would you help me put that together presentation? Where they (the students) really speak? Would you and some of your university students help me with that?” Believing this was a valuable project, I replied, “Yes. This is something we need to do.”

It was an important request because this urban city and its high schools had received national attention for underreporting their dropout rate (Schemo, 2003). This principal and the teachers at this marginal school wanted to tell the stories behind the numbers of dropouts and to give voice to the students who knew these stories. It was an important request because 76% of these students were at risk of leaving school without graduating (HISD Profile, 2004).

In the Spring of 2004, one of the senior English teachers, Ms. Seabrite, (Pseudonyms are used throughout this paper.) who had participated in the earlier legislative project on dropouts introduced critical pedagogy and problem-posing to her students in two of her junior English classes with preliminary readings and discussions. The students in the two junior English classes were representative of the student population: 76% Latino, 20% African American, 3% White (HISD Profile, 2004). Two university students from my fall semester education class joined the team of researchers that consisted of a high school teacher and two junior English classes of 30 students each. As the project grew to a close, three students from the junior English classes and three seniors from the legislative project along with Ms. Seabrite and the university students comprised the team that worked after school hours to ready the research results for a presentation to a major conference in the city.

Method of Analysis

The research process ran on two tracks simultaneously. The research process went through five stages in Freire’s problem-posing for the high school students and through Carspecken’s (1996) five recursive stages of analysis for this researcher. In stage one for the high school students, they reviewed current dropout literature in small groups. In the second stage, the students moved into the field to interview students, student leavers, parents, teachers, and administrators. In the third stage, the students developed presentations and individual papers in new small groups based on themes found in the interviews and in the school district’s research on dropouts. Further research on the individual themes was added. In the fourth stage, a core group of interested students from the large group met after school to develop the final presentation. In the final stage, the students presented their findings to the district superintendent and the mayor’s wife in a city-wide dropout conference. A documentary of their work was made by a local television station and was shown on evening television.

The first three stages of Carspecken’s (1996) critical ethnographic methodology emphasized hermeneutic-reconstructive analysis and the fourth stage used systems analysis. Stage one involved data collection through observation of classroom work and transcription of discussion, student interviews of school leavers, other students, teachers, parents and administrators. In stage two and three analysis of this data began with the coding of major themes and continued with reconstructive analysis of the data that helps make patterns of performative acts clear. Interviews by this researcher with students and school leavers, the core group of students and the university researchers served as member checks on the developing findings. The last two stages helped discover how routine social actions form and reproduce system relations. In these stages the researcher moves from the hermeneutic/insider position to the third person outsider role. In stage four the researcher finds system relations; and in stage five, the micro findings of the first stages are explained through sociological theory.

The Research Process

“Why do kids drop out of school?“
“Most kids who drop out are lazy. They don’t care.”

Before we began a literature review on school leavers with the students, we formed small groups in each class with Ms. Seabrite, myself and the two university students serving as group leaders. With time, two senior girls, Dora and Elena, moved into group leader positions. To initiate small group discussion and relate the study to the lives of the students we asked three questions, “Why do you think kids drop out of school?Do you know anyone who has dropped out?If so, why did they drop out?” The response was “They don’t care about school.They’re lazy.” And the more sophisticated version, “They’re not motivated.” Even if the students admitted that they had brothers and sisters who had dropped out of school, they would say their siblings didn’t “care about school.” There was an element of shame in their voices as the students discussed the “failures” in their families. Even the term ”dropout” carries a negative connotation that exacerbates the concept of “failure.” If we use meaning fields from Carspecken’s reconstructive analysis, we can begin to view the tacit, intersubjective (from the point of view of the speaker) meanings of “They don’t care about school.” Example: “They had trouble passing in school.” AND/OR “They didn’t have any meaningful experiences in school.” AND/OR “School did not value the experiences these students brought from their out-of-school lives.” These meanings began to surface as the students read the literature on school leavers and related that literature to their own experiences.

Stage One. After a preliminary search and annotated list of sources, the Rice undergraduates and I selected Davison, Guerrero, Howarth, Barajas, and Thomas, G., 1999); Flores-Gonzalez, (2002); Gallagher, (2002); McCluskey, Krohn, Lizotte, and Rodriguez, (2002) to discuss with the two classes in small groups. The students used the questions below to guide their critical analysis of the findings in the articles:

As we read the articles students began to take a satellite view of the material that enabled them to distance themselves enough from the material so that they could question the viewpoints and information both from a personal and a wider view of the world (Gee, 2000). Students found the Davison et al study limited itself to immigrant dropouts and counselor interviews. The Gallagher study limited itself to White students. They questioned the stereotypes of Whites and Blacks as heavy drug users and Latinos as beer drinking baby makers in McCloskey et al reading.

These students challenged the Flores-Gonzalez finding that dropping out begins in elementary school. A focus group interview yielded stories of ninth grade bulge supporting Haney’s (2004) finding that the education pipeline springs a leak here. These students reported that ninth grade freedom to take two or three lunches led them to multiple class skipping activities. However, one group did agree with the Flores-Gonzalez finding that dropouts often did not have a niche in school, a place or a group of students that offered a feeling of belongingness.

Many of the students were surprised by the claim of Campbell (2004), an added article, that the policies, the curriculum, and rules at their school were determined by a White majority. Reflecting on how little they and their families knew about “the system” of education, they began to discuss the elements of their home, work, and social life that were at odds with this “White system” of education. The students were also surprised to learn that the district’s profile of their school claimed that 85% of them were at-risk of dropping out of school. Some of them made a connection to the Campbell article and what Valencia (1997) terms as “the deficit thinking” model or what one student cried,“ Do they think we’re dumb just because we go to a barrio school?” This cry foreshadowed a similar exclamation made to the superintendent when one of the students said, “I know you don’t think we kids at Furr know anything.” Using terms like “at-risk” and “free lunch” carry the connotation that they students are “less than” their White rivals at the more affluent schools. On the documentary of these kids’ struggles, one boy said, “My dad didn’t finish school like those dads on the other side of town. He doesn’t have an office job. He’s not thinking of pushing me through high school.” These students were making the connection that the inequity of opportunity means “failure” for them. The students were facing the power of exclusion in the inequity of their school and their parentage.

As the students from the small groups began to report their reactions to the literature to the larger class, the principal joined the class for the presentations. So it was a surprise to see the principal in the class one day as an active listener and the next as an administrator who interrupted the presentations to ask how the students were practicing for the upcoming exit English Test of Academic Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). Stage one of the student research came to an abrupt halt. Presentations were left incomplete as the teacher was forced to spend two weeks preparing for the test that would allow the students to graduate from high school. The power of exclusion again reared its head in the form of an accountability mandated practice that broke the momentum of our research and intimidated the teacher, Seabrite, and her ability to run her class. This stage of our research and the next two stages were marked by obstacles that stymied our work and caused both the teacher and the students to lose interest in the project.

Stage Two. Meetings between Seabrite and the Rice team of researchers began to break down. She was loosing confidence in the project, in her ability to navigate between the politics of what the school required and the steps of the research. We only came to class three times a week, so when we weren’t there the work on the project lapsed. Seabrite elected to discontinue the literature review presentations and started working on interview questions in the second stage with the students that were drawn from a district survey. The questions she and the students developed were not open-ended enough to get into the taken-for-granted experiences of the students.

To regain momentum in the project, the Rice students and I developed interview protocols based on Spradley’s (1979) Grand Tour questions, asking school leavers and potential school leavers to discuss their academic lives and the roles their family and friends played in their lives. We pulled in two other Rice research students and practiced the interview protocol with the junior English students and students who had left school and now returned.

As the students began to interview each other in small groups, it was difficult to separate the interviewers from the interviewees. Students would discuss teachers they shared and memorable experiences they had in school from elementary through high school. One interview among Latino students turned into a group discussion of a school journey that was stalled in ninth grade before regaining momentum in sophomore year. Their story disputed the Flores-Gonzalez (2002) book and agreed with the Haney (2004) ninth grade leak in the educational pipeline. The students noisily described their fruitful elementary school years filled with academic awards and honors. Middle school brought fewer accolades but more school social activities. Ninth grade was a year of social excitement with new friends from other schools, less supervision than middle school, an easy opportunity to skip classes with friends, and for many, a year of academic failure. Parents, friends and inner resolve encouraged these students to continue their schooling, but many of their friends dropped out.

However, home life and school life appeared in sharp relief in some stories as students explored their family obligations. Students struggled with unusual responsibilities that sent them into adult life at home and a suspended life of adolescent freedom at school. A seemingly carefree African American student laughed off her failing status in school. Her jovial, boisterous nature marked her as a class clown who takes nothing seriously. However, her tone became more serious as she talks about her family responsibilities. This failing student had moved out of her family home into her great grandmother’s home to prepare meals, wash clothes, clean house, and help her ailing great grandmother with morning and evening dressing. By the time this student appeared in the documentary, her great grandmother had died, and this young woman was preparing to sell the house. She had missed her final exams and needed to find a way to take make-up exams.

In another group, a school leaver who had returned described his life on the streets. This former druggie explained that he was making a few hundred dollars a day standing in line for his dad’s prospective clients waiting to get bail bond money. When he came to school, he questioned the relevance of what he was learning in comparison with the lives of his family members and the work he was doing on the streets.

Another school leaver was a recent Mexican immigrant who had already graduated from high school in Mexico. She was surprised and frustrated when she did not receive credit for her schooling and was placed in the freshman class. She left school and was called back by the principal who negotiated two years of high school credit for this immigrant. Three stories revealed the lives of students that caused them to out of sync and excluded from the school process. Another story revealed the ninth grade leak that Haney (2004) had found with students turning to the fun of social life and away from the abstract subject matter into dropouts because of failing grades and poor attendance.

The students were to go out with their tape recorders during spring break to interview school leavers. The Rice researchers and I gave our phone numbers and offered to meet at local fast food places or homes. No calls came. No interviews were done. Racial discrimination, discipline problems, learning problems, alternative education programs, Limited English Proficient (LEP) dropouts, gifted and talented dropouts.

Stage Three. Without consulting with us, Seabrite threw the students into this stage with a more specific literature review on themes drawn from the district’s research on dropouts. Racial discrimination, discipline problems, learning problems, alternative education programs, Limited English Proficient (LEP) dropouts, gifted and talented dropouts were the chosen themes. Some students chose a theme, but most students chose to be with their friends. Groups ranged in size from four to eight. With no preparation and little guidance other than a couple of handouts students were to find new articles and books, interview teachers and students. They could also use the interviews they had done in class and some of the previous articles from the initial literature review. Most groups fell apart because they were newly formed and did not have sufficient guidance to come up with a PowerPoint presentation and independent research papers.

We did have some surprises as we entered this final stage with the high school students. A Latina student who designed the PowerPoint presentation for her small group spent much of the early days of the project applying makeup and reading beauty magazines. An African American male who was classified as a special education student with marginal reading ability made a summary presentation of a research article from a peer-reviewed journal and organized the PowerPoint presentation for his small group.

Another student who had separated herself from the class, firmly ensconced in front of blank computer screen, head down between folded arms, oblivious to the discussion of research articles and interviews. However, her first writing on the dropout issue showed the strongest writing voice in the two junior English classes. This Latina left the magnet program at in this school after her sister had died the previous year. She had isolated herself from her classmates. Facing mandated school failure because of poor attendance, she has been coaxed into a group where she has contributed literature reviews and a revealing interview for the final project.

As this stage grew to a close, I had finished a PowerPoint presentation with two groups as did the university undergraduates. These presentations were never put before the class. We never saw the research papers. The end of the project was never discussed with the students. In fact, the teacher was rarely in the classroom when we were. Seabrite seemed to have abdicated.

Stage Four. As with the first two stages, we entered into the fourth stage with a determination among the undergraduates and myself that this project would have a fruitful conclusion. We sought volunteers from the junior English students to meet after school to examine our findings and do more research and interviews to support our position. We were preparing the results of this four month study to make a presentation to the school superintendent, the mayor’s wife, and the media. Three of the junior class leaders volunteered to meet. The senior class president asked to join the group. Two gang leaders from rival groups joined us in the last weeks of our preparation. These last two members added the controversial and often secretive street gang section to our research that was important. All three of the junior class leaders added poignant stories about work, sexual and physical abuse, and a drug overdose. This group of students was the most aware of systemic problems that needed to be acknowledged and addressed for school leavers and potential school leavers.

Findings

The questions that drove this research were “What causes students to dropout of schools?” and “What is missing from the dropout literature?” When these students began to investigate the lives of dropouts, their own lives, and the policies in their school, they realized that they were leading exclusionary lives that forced them to find power in activities that were not sanctioned by their school life. The policies of the state and school district were excluding an understanding of the lives these students lead.

Zero Tolerance. The first policy that hurts these kids is zero tolerance. An understanding of its ineffectiveness requires an understanding of the way the gangs function. The two gang leaders on the final research team explained that gang membership defined many of the students’ identity in their neighborhoods. This identity was excluded from the life of the school. The students throughout the school were aware of the gangs and their importance in the neighborhood. Juan explains:

I’m a Hispanic and my grandpa always told us, “A Mexican always busts his ass, no matter how much the rate pay is, he busts his ass to make that money and support his family.” But a Chicano, that’s a Hispanic American, he don’t want to work. He wants to lead the easy life like the White people that most of the time they’ve got every thing made for them. … We want to go out there and sell drugs, fight for our neighborhood. And try to make our own money instead of bustin a sweat out there. Working labor. Working in the sun all day. Taking orders from a man you don’t even know.

Anderson (1994) explains that the street culture has evolved what may be called

“a code of the streets, which amounts to a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, including violence. The rules prescribe both a proper comportment and a proper way to respond if challenged.”

This code of the streets that included a loyalty and respect that often meant street violence with other gangs. Marquise explains how respect and loyalty work on the streets.

It’s two neighborhoods. They get in to it over whatever the situation may be – over a girl, over “he walked by me; he bumped into me,” over anything. If you feel that somebody has crossed that line to where they disrespect you, then you’re going to do whatever you feel on your mind that you feel is necessary to gain the respect of that person.

Dora explains that a person who “snitches” on a gang member and accepts a reward will have to pay for violating the gang loyalty.

Like when they offer rewards, you know. If you snitched, they’re going to have to deal with that. I mean, you’re going to have to deal with what you did. They can’t just let you get away with it. …

These same students feel that they have a responsibility to defend their property, their families, and themselves against intruders. The gang sometimes offers a safety net. The police are not dependable. Many of these students have relatives in prison.

When Dora first discussed the code of the streets, she called it a prison code. She explained that most of the students had incarcerated family members. Juan talks about his family’s connection to prison.

I’ve already done been incarcerated. And done gangbang all over for a couple of years. I lost one of my uncles in the struggle too, you know. I had another uncle who was incarcerated for five years, and … I got one that’s doing time right now. He’s doing 7. And that’s the last one we have in there. A lot of young Hispanic people get incarcerated. I’m saying the same as black people. And they all do drop out.

The two major gang leaders who had a major fight on campus the previous Halloween explain the ineffectiveness of the zero tolerance policy on changing their behavior. Juansays that when a fight breaks out in school, kids are not thinking about zero tolerance.

At the moment we don’t think about zero tolerance, it’s our reputation. We can’t let nobody take our manhood away and make us look like we’ve got problems in front of all these people.

Marquise adds:

You think about zero tolerance, but everything happens so fast. If somebody runs up on you, you can’t do nothing about it but defend yourself. And if you get kicked out over defending yourself, then you get kicked out. … Whatever was on your mind, that’s what you reacted to. It’s not racial; it’s about respect.

Marquise’s final remark refers to the fact that this incident was a Black gang against a Brown gang and that the code of the streets takes precedence over racial issues that may exist between the gangs.

Poverty. What is really under this life on the streets is the life of poverty. Students living in these poor neighborhoods are often called on to defend themselves and the homes of their families. That defense earns them respect in their neighborhoods. To maintain that respect students bond with others as they play basketball in neighborhood parks. These bonded groups show loyalty by defending their neighborhood against other groups. These neighborhood groups earn money by selling drugs and robbing homes and businesses. These illicit actions lead to incarceration and even death.

The students found that their life at home and in the streets was in direct conflict with school policies. Zero tolerance does not deter fights in schools. In most cases those fights are a continuance of life in the streets. Students receive “tickets” that their parents have to pay in justice of the peace courts, or the school rule breakers are referred to alternative schools. Referral to alternative schools is also a punitive policy that does not work. This action allows students to make new drug contacts and exacerbates a life of fighting. Students need policies that help them develop conflict resolution strategies. The current policies encourage the rough street life and send students down the road to prisons.

Recommendations

Themes of families in overcrowded homes with family violence and sexual abuse met neighborhood groups/gangs with a code of the streets. Work responsibility for some was traffic in drugs and theft for others. What brought status in the streets brought sanctions in the school. Students who were respected on the streets were fined and/or removed from schools. Students who worked for their families, babysat, took Spanish-only parents to doctors were valued at home and punished with loss of academic credit at school. These exclusionary reproductive loops of family and street activities bringing school sanctions and eventual school leaving for adolescents can be broken with a change in school policies and a civic recognition and resolution to improve our parks and neighborhoods and establish more public works jobs and job training for our poor. The students in this school called for a reform of the school policies and that favored poor over rich, white over brown and black students, individual goals over group and family loyalty, and voiced hegemony over voiceless oppression. They also realized that this reform should be coupled with civic reform for the oppressed neighborhoods in which they live.

The exclusionary practices Michelle Fine chronicled in 1991 still exist today and are exacerbated with the addition of first and second generation immigrant problems in our city’s schools. Students coming from other countries find real graduation obstacles when their credits from their home schools are not accepted. Credits are also denied because of poor attendance. The attendance policy that denies credits to students after five absences hurts students who are making good grades and need to be absent to help their families. In addition, if students do not advance to tenth grade or eleventh grade because they failed a core class (algebra, science, social studies, English), they lose a valuable incentive to continue in school.

Recommendations for curriculum should also consider the lives of the students. Rather than accumulating information for tests in their classrooms, students need to use the scientific method, math principles, historical concepts, reading, writing, and speaking skills to solve real life problems in their families, their communities, and their city. Academic rigor needs to team with multicultural texts and students’ real life experiences so that these students can continue their analysis of their lives and improve their situations in the community.

In order for a partnership between parents and the school to develop evenings with learning fun similar to those in elementary school. These parents did not finish school nor did they have a positive relationship with high schools. They need to be invited in from their churches and communities to join in the school learning process.

Because schools cannot deter dropouts alone, students had recommendations for their employers and the city. The students know that they need encouragement from their employers with workplaces where employers will encourage their education, provide financial aid for higher education, and perhaps tutorials.

The city parks where students gather need community centers that provide intramural sports and social activities.

For more information on the results of the students’ research, see http://centerforeducation.rice.edu/Research/DropoutSpeeches.html.

References

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Campbell, L. (2004). As strong as the weakest link: Urban high school dropout. High School Journal, 87, 16-27.

Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research. New York: Routledge.

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Orfield, G., Losen, J., Wald, C., & Swanson, B. (2004) Losing our future: How minority youth are being left behind by the graduation rate crisis. Retrieved October 21, 2004, from The Harvard Civil Rights Web site http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/dropouts/dropouts04.php.

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Valencia, Richard R. (1997). Conceptualizing the notion of deficit thinking. In R.R. Valencia (Ed.), The evolution of deficit thinking: Educational thought and practice. (pp. 1-12). London: The Falmer Press